Walt Whitman, From I Sing the Body Electric
Courtesy of the Bayley-Whitman Collection of Ohio Wesleyan University of Delaware, Ohio.
Walt Whitman
From I Sing the Body Electric (Literature To Go, p. 510)
Listen to a portion of “I Sing the Body Electric,” read by Brian Murray.
From Walt Whitman: Selected Poems. Recorded by permission of Dover Publications, Inc.
Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing
first response. What informs this speaker’s attitude toward the human body?
Read the poem aloud. Is it simply a tedious enumeration of body parts, or do the lines achieve some kind of rhythmic cadence?